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GCK

Jan: Cats-1 John-4

Feb: Cats-0 John-4

February 28, 2007

'Polar Star and the Long Haired Wanderer'

I took this photo about ten or twelve years ago.
The comet had been travelling near the North Star and I had a two minute (or so) exposure on the film. 
I've always liked this shot.

February 27, 2007

Talkin' Turkey

Our local turkeys are pretty, but not usually seen as something you want to go out to hunt. They are said to be kind of scrawny and stringy. So I guess that's a plus for them!

Here's a couple of them roosting up in a Sycamore tree near sundown.   They'll stay in the tree until daylight now.

   Domestic turkeys have a reputation for being stupid (I mean really really stupid). But these wild ones have a lot of skill and craft at getting through the woods quietly. I have followed them along before, and always been surprised when they quietly went a hundred yards without me hearing them. They don't fly a lot, although I have seen them go from hilltop to hilltop. So for a few seconds they might be hundreds of feet off the canyon bottom. This gives the illusion of strong flyers. but you can see they struggle to maintain altitude.

   When flying across a canyon they give the appearance of flying reptiles, like Pterodactyls from the Jurassic age. They are ungainly, big, and have to work hard to fly. They are much more suited to slipping through the woods, their lithe scrawny bodies making easy way through the tangles of vines and brush on the forest floor.

February 26, 2007

A husband asks his wife, "If I should die first would you
marry again?"

"I would be heart-broken, of course," was her reply, "but
I think eventually I would remarry."

"But you wouldn't bring him here to our house?"

"Why not? I've worked and slaved to make this house a home.
There is no reason to abandon it."

"But you wouldn't sleep in our bed?"

"Well, I wouldn't run out and buy a new bed right away."

"Surely, you wouldn't let him use my golf clubs?"

"Of course not! He's lefthanded!"

February 25, 2007

"Give me a lever long enough,
and a place on which to rest it, and I will move the world"
 ~Archimedes~

   It is funny how each generation thinks they are the epitome of accomplishment. We tend not to look to the distant past for refinement and elegance, yet in some ways the successes of the ancients rival our own.
   Here are some recent articles I found of interest.

Remains of houses associated with Stonehenge found

 Another ancient observatory discovered in Brazil

 And a fellow who uses the old technology to move huge blocks, and he'll sell you the ancient secret in a video.

 Another similar site is the coral castle,  this fellow also said he had found the secrets of the ancients.

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   Whitie tangled with the porch skunk again last night (this is round number five). Here's our little buddy with his tomato juice on to neutralize the smell.

   We reached for the cans of tomato juice we keep for such occurances. It does OK, but is not perfect.

February 24, 2007

Migrant Mother, Nipomo California

   Our little tiny town of Nipomo was catapulted to a sort of ignominy during the dark days of the Great Depression. A photographer named Dorothea Lange was tasked along with many others to roam the country taking photos of the travails of the people, to document the effects of the depression.
   While she was traveling through our little town, she passed a small camp of the roaming field workers who traveled from town to town following the harvests.  She continued to think on this while driving, the thought nagging at her that regardless of need to get to San Francisco quickly, she should stop at that camp.  She made it almost halfway to San Luis Obispo before she decided to turn around and visit the camp.  
   It is said that she drove to the entrance of the camp, stopped her car, and took six photographs of a woman and her children. She then gave her name and the purpose of taking the photos, and got in her car and drove North again.
   Soon one of those photographs became an iconic image of the Depression in America. It has been seen worldwide and is among the most famous photographs ever taken...and it all happened in our town.
   You can read the story as told by the Migrant Mother's grandson.

   Those days were full  of homeless people, but we called them Oakies, itinerant fieldworkers,  tramps, vagabonds and hobos then. There is something of an alluring mystique to the Hobo thinking, but this evaporates for most young men after a few weeks of little food and the dangers of the road. It is in honor of the people and spirit of those times that the song lyrics such as those below were written...

'The Best Durn Ride'
~IIIrd Time Out~

Clancy was an old man living in the old folks home,
telling me tales about all the roads that he once roamed.

He used to ride the freight train, hoppin' cars and stockin gloves,
watchin’ that Missouri moon shining down from above

 He was just a ramblin’ man, another year, nothing more,
made a little money pickin’ fruit and sweepin’ floors

 He drifted back home again in 1944,
watched out for all the old folks while the whole world went to war.

 Clancy was an old man and he told me stories about the things that his years had brought
He said some day he’d take that last great ride to Glory,
and it’d be the best durn ride he ever got.

 Clancy never watched TV, he didn’t like to hear the news,
said he was just too old to put up with the blues

He traded in his drafty house for a warm room with a view.
Said he appreciated having nothing left to lose.

 Clancy was an old man and he told me stories about the things that his years had brought
He said some day he’d take that last great ride to Glory,
and it’d be the best durn ride he ever got.

 Now I travel on the road, and roam around from place to place,
and as I pass through a number more than the lines on an old man’s face…
some are very far away, an old Hobo’s changing cars,
tradin’ in his wheelchair for the Lord’s Great Road of Stars.

 Clancy was an old man and he told me stories about the things that his years had brought
He said some day he’d take that last great ride to Glory,
and it’d be the best durn ride he ever got.

    There is a national treasure that each society has, it is the aged.  The ones with the experience, wisdom and humility to guide a society sit in their chairs and their beds and gaze through old eyes at a new world, one they know better than the others that they will soon leave. To them it is not an abstract concept, but a reality they have seen fulfilled time and again in their lives. But there is so much we can learn from these ones who have been through it all... do not discount the counsel of the aged, learn from them while they are still around to give guidance.

  ~Psalm 92.13-14~
Those who are planted in the house of the Lord,
Shall flourish in the courts of our God.
They shall still bear fruit in old age;
They shall be fresh and flourishing.

~ Job 12.1 2~
Wisdom is with aged men,
And with length of days, understanding.

~Proverbs 16.31~
The silver-haired head is a crown of glory,
If it is found in the way of righteousness.

~Isaiah 46.4~
Even to your old age, I am God
And even to gray hairs I will carry you!
I have made, and I will bear;
Even I will carry, and will deliver you.

February 23, 2007

"From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more...forever"
~Chief Joseph~

This is one wall of our living room.

   Every single item here means something to us. The center photograph is Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce (a personal hero of mine). The tiny ceramic buffalo skull below him has cat whiskers Vickie finds fallen from the cats. It also has two porcupine quills I took from a porcupine while Vickie helped me by distracting him (the porcupine was unharmed).
   The cow skulls were from the Great Flood of '69, several hundred local cattle were killed. For a few years I could find these skulls here and there in the sands of the Santa Ynez River.
   There is also a picture of our motorcycle, a 1960 Pan-Vel Harley.
   And in the center of it all, is a symbol of  and prayer for peace.
   There is great contentment in being  happy and comfortable in one's surroundings, we like where we are, we have truly been blessed.

   Words, deeds and philosophy of the past is all we have of those who have gone on before us, we must learn from they who lived before us, and hard lives they lived indeed.

"Tell General Howard I know his heart. What he told me before, I have it in my heart. I am tired of fighting. Our chiefs are killed; Looking Glass is dead, Too-hul-hul-sote is dead. The old men are all dead. It is the young men who say yes or no. He who led on the young men is dead. It is cold, and we have no blankets; the little children are freezing to death. My people, some of them, have run away to the hills, and have no blankets, no food. No one knows where they are—perhaps freezing to death. I want to have time to look for my children, and see how many of them I can find. Maybe I shall find them among the dead. Hear me, my chiefs! I am tired; my heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever."
Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt (Chief Joseph)

February 22, 2007

Why-Not Minot?

   We got a cactus order the other day from someone in North Dakota. I just couldn't resist e-mailing them and letting them know that I also used to live in North Dakota, one of the Great Prairie States.

   He asked me if I miss the weather, the song lyrics below answer that question quite well...

HIGHWAY HEADIN' SOUTH
~Porter Wagoner~

On a highway headed south somewhere to Dixie
Where the cotton blooms in spring and the snow don't fly
I'm gonna rest these chilly bones in southern sunshine
And live where the weather's warm until I die

North Dakota you got my better years
Montana you got five years of my life
But your subzero wind will never touch me again
A southern girl can't live on snow and ice

When I cross the Dixie line I'll throw away my coat
And my goose down underwear will have to go
I'll never live again where the weather chills you to the bone
I'm tired of livin' like an Eskimo

   My apologies to any Inuit People who happen to read this, the poem was written in the days before most folks knew the term 'Eskimo' to be a derogatory term, but if it were changed now, the rhyme would be lost.

   Yep, I do like the weather here.

February 21, 2007

Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me

Lyrics by Bernie Taupin

Don't let the sun go down on me
Although I search myself, it's always someone else I see
I'd just allow a fragment of your life to wander free
But losing everything is like the sun going down on me

The last week has given us some really nice weather. Some days have crept up to the eighties, and it has the stirrings of Spring coming on. The birds are hunting around looking for nesting spots, many trees (plums and almonds) are already blooming out for spring. The beaches are nice right now with this kind of weather. Here are some pics of a little drive around today.

Everyone I saw today seemed to want to comment on how great the weather is.  And it is good that so many people will comment with a smile on how lucky we all are to be living here. People who are fortunate to any degree are doubly fortunate just being able to realize their good fortune.

February 20, 2007

   The winter cold threw use a toozy (whatever that is), most of our most popular cactus are frozen and will not be harvestable until mid March at the earliest.

   But we do have some other varieties which are more well adapted to the local climate. We can take leaves of those to sell to people who need some.

   The plant below is called 'robusta'. It can also be called 'Dinner Plate Cactus'. When we let the leaves grow to their maximum, they can sometimes be twenty inches or more across, over an inch thick, and weigh some ten to twelve pounds.

   but right now, we have some leaves that grew after a large harvest this last fall. These leaves have the spark and tenderness of youth to them, even though each leaf weighs in at over a pound.

   We'll be selling these for a while on our website, until the regular ones come back online. You can go to our Edible Cactus Page to find the ordering information on these leaves.

February 19, 2007

Hay, Straw...hay, straw...hay, straw

Rolls of hay, all turned off the truck on the side of the road, ready for a neighbor to pick up. Each one is about 6 feet each way, and weighs about 1,000 pounds.

      I recall that when I was a kid one of my uncles (onkle Martin) spoke of being inducted into the military while in Eastern Europe during W.W.II. He said that almost all of them were peasants, and unaware of the world outside their home areas. He told me something shocking about some of those young men, some were so backwards that they did not know their left from their right. When the Drill Instructors commanded them to march using the familiar 'left-right' cadence, these guys did not know one from the other. For this reason all in the unit were forced to place straw under one lapel on their shoulders, and hay under the other. When these guys marched behind the other fellow, the instructor hollered "hay, straw...hay, straw," and these fellows marched to the beat they were given. They did not know the difference between left and right, but they knew the difference between hay and straw.

February 18, 2007

'Time enough at last',

or

'How tragically ironic, Poor Mr. Bemis'

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We got a nice little 'Thank you' e-mail today...

"I'm sending this email to tell your company how helpful this website was to me for my homework. Thank you for making such an informative website.

yours sincerely,

Happy customer"

   Well, thank you also dear customer, we're so glad we were able to lend some help.

   We enjoy the letters we get from youngsters who use the site to get some information, we truly believe that learning is a life-long venture and should be approached in the way of play and interest. It can be so tedious going through textbooks full of facts and figures, when the same story can be told with flourishes and ways to make it interesting. We appreciate the blessings we've been given, and try to give some back in the form of information.

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   I went to the local Library in Santa Maria today, it was not yet open, but already a small throng of people were gathered near the door awaiting the opening. Soon the large heavy oaken doors were unlocked and swung open beckoning us into the interior of that large cavernous 'Old Spanish' style building. I walked beyond my normal 'Business', 'Philosophy', and 'Agriculture' sections to the Classics, the writings of Tacitus,   the plays of Homer, the 'Thousand and One Nights', Plato, the accumulated works of Edgar Allen Poe,  Tolstoy, Longfellow, Tennyson....all old reputable names that will endure as long as book knowledge is passed on in freedom.

   While looking through all these books, and sadly lamenting the fact that I have no time to read them all, I was struck with the thought of the Twilight Zone where the meek bookworm, Mr. Bemis who longed only to read, was settled in the bank vault during a nuclear blast, and when he emerged, the world was destroyed.  But he had endless time for reading the classics anytime he wished with no interference from his nagging wife or uncaring boss. He had all he needed, the library and canned goods. As he stacked his collections of books he came upon an unfortunate accident (I don't want to spoil the ending for anyone who has not seen it).

   Life gives us things, we don't know why...we look for things, and sometimes we don't know what or why we seek. Always, what we need may be in ourselves, but we don't look in to find it, we look without. How much simpler to take that trip inside and find what you need, simple, but not easy.

The Twilight Zone: Time Enough At Last (1 of 3)

The Twilight Zone: Time Enough At Last (2 of 3)

The Twilight Zone: Time Enough At Last (3 of 3)

February 17, 2007

Manzanita, the 'Little Apples' of California

   Manzanita is a native shrub/tree that grows all over the West. It is especially prevalent in this area. Today, while walking past this manzanita I heard the buzzing of what seemed like hundreds of bees. Looking deeper into the plant, I saw it was full of the huge black and yellow bumblebees.

A full grown mature Manzanita (ten feet each way), this is the season when the little bell-shaped flowers come out. They are really beautiful plants.  In the summer the orange/red berries will attract bears and foxes. We will find the scat of these creatures all over, full of the half digested berries, all deposited in a little pile of fertilizer, and scarified seeds, ready to grow with the rains of the next winter.

Manzanita Bark is very distinctive. The bark is nice and smooth, and has a pretty red color.

Later in the season the old bark will 'shed' off from the branches, and in time the new bark will be predominant and on top to see it in it's fresh state.

What is so great about manzanita is the way that we don't need to mess with these plants. This one is in our front yard, we've NEVER watered it, pruned it or messed with it in any way. It grows on it's own with no input from us. I like having good looking plants that I don't need to coddle, and doing it with plants that are well adapted to your own local conditions is the way to do this. This individual plant is the ultimate in no-work gardening, I didn't even plant it, it is so native and adapted, that it grew on it's own from it's first seedsprout.

A manzanita flower being pollinated by a bumblebee.  This photo also shows well the little pretty bell shaped manzanita flowers. While peering into the bush to take these photos, I was startled to see a hummingbird hovering in amongst the branches in the innards of the tree.  I tried to get a photo, but the hummer was camera shy, and ran off as fast as his little legs could carry him.

You can see that some of the flowers in this grouping have been pollinated and lost their petals. They will soon develop into the pretty berries these plants carry in the summer. The berries are why they are called Manzanita, this is the reference to the fact that the berries look a bit like tiny little (1/3 inch) apples. Manzana means 'Apple' in Spanish, when you add 'ita' to a female gender noun in Spanish, it means 'little'. Ergo; manzanita means little Apple.

The same rule applies with male gender nouns, where you add 'ito'. For instance 'Miguel' means 'Michael', 'Miguelito' means 'Little Mike', or we would probably be more likely to say 'Mikey' or 'Mickey'.

February 16, 2007

I Can't Drive 55
~Sammy Hagar~

One foot on the brake and one on the gas,
Well, there's too much traffic, I can't pass,
So I tried my best illegal move,
A big black and white come and crushed my groove!
When I drive that slow, you know it's hard to steer.
And I can't get my car out of second gear.
What used to take two hours now takes all day.
It took me 16 hours to get to L.A.!
Go on and write me up for 125
Post my face, wanted dead or alive
Take my license n' all that jive
I can't drive 55!

   California does have a very efficient Highway system. The Los Angeles area is covered with thousands of miles of good grade roadway and carries many millions of cars daily. This upcoming cloverleaf is a case in point...you need to know your way around here, otherwise it is so easy to miss your offramp and have to go miles to get back to where you should have turned. Note the '55 Speed Limit' sign.  Sometimes you can't get to half the speed limit due to heavy traffic.

   Also, be ready and prepared for traffic, anytime you think it should take an hour to go forty miles, give yourself two hours. This will help keep you from being late, and will make the trip much easier. Fortunately there is so much to look at in the L.A. area that when you get somewhere an hour early, you can walk around and see so many interesting things (and people).  So it is not really wasted time.

I'm just a Country Boy, so this big city is an exciting thing to see.   Even the time in traffic is interesting with all the cool cars and buildings to look at as I slowly roll down the freeway.

Yes, sometimes I can't drive 55, as in this 'Rush-Hour' scene, but I can often get to near half that speed!

It's funny when I listen to the L.A. radio traffic reports, with their endless notices of traffic slow-ups and delays.  Then I come back home to the country, and our local radio here will give a warning about a horse or cattle loose on the road. I guess we all have our problems with traffic, they are just different.

February 15, 2007

   El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles del Río de Porciúncula

or

The City of Los Angeles

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Godzilla
~Blue Oyster Cult~

With a purposeful grimace and a terrible sound
He pulls the spitting high tension wires down

Helpless people on a subway train
Scream bug-eyed as he looks in on them

He picks up a bus and he throws it back down
As he wades through the buildings toward the center of town

Los Angeles has some beauty about it. I actually enjoy seeing these big huge skyscrapers every time I go near the city center.

Huge numbers of people live and work in these buildings.  But like looking at a termite mound from afar, you don't see all the hustle and bustle going on inside.

The signature plant of L.A. the palm tree figures as a silhouette when the sun goes down behind them while the storm clouds paint the sky with a thousand shades. This is a masterpiece of composition, painted for us daily by the Master Himself.

This reminds me of a Sci-Fi movie scene, I am just all ready for a huge lizard, ant or woman to come tearing through these wires.  Just to the bottom right are the same buildings as above.

Is this LA sliding off into the sea? Or did I just have my camera angle wrong?

February 14, 2007

The Santa Maria Valley and Nipomo Mesa

or,

'Let Them Eat Broccoli'

This is a view of the Santa Maria Valley from the Nipomo Mesa. The Mesa is the large flat-topped sand spit blown inland by eons of wind activity. The sands are over one hundred feet thick. To the far right of the photo, you can see the edge of the Mesa, where the river has cut through it. The flatlands of the Santa Maria Valley are very fertile loamy soils and grow a majority of the Nation's strawberries and broccoli. Lettuce is another big crop in this valley.

Another view of this 'Salad Bowl' of the nation. Many of the fields are just now being prepared for the spring plantings. But this area can grow winter crops quite well.  I suppose it's a good five miles across the valley, and it goes some fifteen or twenty miles inland. Many hundreds of thousands of acres of fertile soil yielding nutritious food crops to be sent all across the country.

   Since broccoli is one of the top three crops in this area, the farmers are a bit sensitive about people who don't like broccoli. Back in the days of Pres. Bush Sr., the prez decided he didn't like broccoli, and told his wife that he should not have to eat it if he didn't want to, he was after all president...the broccoli growers here all got together and sent a trailer full of broccoli (forty tons I think it was) to the White House.  The president still refused to eat it, but he let the driver take it to the local food banks to be distributed among the needy in our nation's capital.

February 13, 2007

Robotic Cleaning Devices

   Have you ever thought of looking into one of those new 'Robotic' carpet sweepers? They sound really interesting, and a recent evaluation I read gave a good report on the abilities of these little helpers.

   What I found most interesting in the article (besides the technical abilities of the machine) was the anthropomorphizing so frequently used throughout the article. Several times the author referred to the robot as 'he'. It is interesting how quickly we can give attributes to a machine, whether it be 'she' for a ship, or 'he' for a little machine.

   This thought brought back the old joke that centers around what gender a computer is. In many languages, the Latin and Germanic language groups for instance, you use a gender word to describe any object. In Spanish this is La for a 'female' item, i.e. 'La Mesa' is 'the table', and 'El Diablo' is 'The Devil'.  Is a computer 'El Computor', or is it 'La Computor'? German would be 'Der Komputor', or 'Die Komputor', depending on the gender decided by society.

   Here we have the reasons computers are male or female, depending on a person's reference point:

Gender and Computers

Top nine reasons computers must be male:

1. They have a lot of data but are still clueless.

2. A better model is always just around the corner.

3. They look nice and shiny until you bring them home.

4. It is always necessary to have a backup.

5. They'll do whatever you say if you push the right buttons.

6. The best part of having either one is the games you can play.

7. The lights are on but nobody's home.

8. Big power surges knock them out for the night.

9. Size does matter

Top nine reasons computers must be female:

1. Picky, picky, picky.

2. They hear what you say, but not what you mean.

3. Beauty is only shell deep.

4. When you ask what's wrong, they say "nothing".

5. Can produce incorrect results with alarming speed.

6. Always turning simple statements into big productions.

7. Smalltalk is important.

8. You do the same thing for years, and suddenly it's wrong.

9. They make you take the garbage out.

   I don't know what the scholars ever decided. Perhaps the issue is still being debated.

February 12, 2007

Good as Cold Water can get them

   A City Kid went to visit his uncle living in a cabin in the mountains.

   On the first supper they had together, the  kid remarked on how greasy the dinnerware (plates) was. The Uncle’s reply was simple, “That’s as good as Cold Water can get them”.

   They ate, and the uncle then told the kid he’d show him some of the local trails on the mountain, as they were leaving the cabin the uncle’s old Blue-Tick Hound was laying across the doorway. The uncle stabbed at him with his cane to get him to move, and hollered “Out of the way Cold Water’.

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    The story above was told to me by a friend who grew up in a cabin in Kentucky. He lives very remote in a treehouse/groundhouse built into a series of trees in California, far from the power lines of civilization.

    Again the dichotomy of civilization comes to mind, how different we all can be while concurrently ‘the same’.

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    My father grew up on a  small farm in the Ozarks in Missouri, he went to Europe after W.W.II with the military where he met my mother.   The first time she invited him to her home for a home cooked meal, she cooked chicken soup. He stepped into the door smelling that delicious familiar smell of home cooked chicken soup (a welcome reprieve from the Mess Hall), but when she went to the pot and pulled the chicken out with it’s feet and head still on, he thought that was kinda odd. But in Europe in the old days, people ate the entire animal, head and feet too.

   Then years later Dad took Mom to visit his uncle living on a lake in the Ozarks. She’d imagined a large house, rich Americans, maybe a speedboat and bridge. But instead my Dad drove his car up a long rutted dirt road, they pulled up to a small dock, honked the horn a few times, and flashed the lights in a certain sequence. A few minutes later they could hear the ‘swish-swish’ of oars slipping into the water, and out of the misty darkness came the apparition of an older man bending his back to the oars. Stepping into the small boat, she had difficulty on the rounded boat bottom walking with her heels which she had worn to impress the Americans (she was conscious of her post-war peasant upbringing, and still imagined all Americans lived lives of luxury and high fashion).  Dad’s uncle and aunt lived in a cabin all alone on this little island with no power, it sounds very primitive.  But they had the delicious smell of cooking wafting from the dirt-poor cabin. Dad’s aunt was eager to show off her cooking, but when she opened the wood-burner stove to show my mom the meal, my mom screamed, she thought it was a rat, but it turned out to be a Possum.

    We are all very different, but we are all the same in some ways. The trick  I guess is to find your own niche where you can move along in comfort and ease with your surroundings. I suppose some people have different tolerances for change or different circumstances. To be able to change with the times and situations is a very advantageous trait. If any animal remains static, it will die out, either on an individual or a species basis. This is true whether it be a species, a people, or a business. 'Change and adapt or die' is the watchword of evolution. It has been said many times, ‘The only thing that stays the same is change’. Be resilient, be aware, observe what happens; compare it to history to determine what the future might bring. Don’t be rigid and unchanging, it is the rigid tree that breaks in the storm.

Chapter 76

At birth a person is soft and supple; at their deaths they are firm and strong.
All creatures, plants and trees are born tender and flexible,
when they are dead they become brittle and dried.
Thus it is that people who are stiff and hard are companions of death.
The soft and yielding are the followers of life.
It can be seen that a great inflexible army will fall under it's own weight,
just as a stiff unyielding tree will break in the wind.
Dwelling in an inflexible unyielding manner will bring downfall.
The pliant and supple will survive.

February 11, 2007

Tao de Ching

The ancient masters of the Tao
had a subtle, perceptive, penetration.
Their wisdom was unfathomable and cannot be comprehended.
It is because they were unknowable that we can only describe the way they appeared.
They were as careful as someone crossing an iced-over stream,
They were as aware as a warrior in hostile territory.
They were as considerate and humble as a guest,
They were as changeable as melting ice.
They were as unpretentious as an un-carved block of wood,
and as approachable as a wide open valley.
They were as clear as a glass of water.
Do you have the patience to wait...
till the mud settles and your water is clear?
Can you remain motionless...
till the right action arises by itself?
The Master doesn't seek fulfillment.
Not seeking, not expecting, never full,
He is at hand in every moment.
He is like a sprout ready to bud, he does not rush to early ripening.

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  Winter squats over us, dark clouds forming off the coast rush onto the coastal hills dumping their loads of precious life-giving waters. While nature gives, she also takes. The rains have come after an unaccustomed freeze, leaving California crops destroyed by the same hand that gives us providence.

   I yearn for the fresh buds of spring to burst forth giving us the leaves we send to people across the country who need them. But it is precisely in these times that I must fall back upon an acknowledgement of nature's ways not being set to fulfill my expectations. I must wait for the season to be in it's full run before things will work out OK again. The spring is not coming here for my sake, it is coming here because it comes every spring in the great clockwork of creation that runs through all the seasons of our lives. What we want does not matter, we get what we get, we'd better be happy with what comes our way, otherwise our lives will be full of vexation and torment, continually reaching for the stars that remain elusive and out of our reach.

   Better perhaps to take a piece of a star that has fallen, and be happy with that little piece given to you, than to continually strive relentlessly for more. Nature and God give you what you need, some get more, and some beat themselves and all around them in  an eternal quest for more, but are they fulfilled? Isn't it after overeating that we are full of regret? Perhaps better to take and eat what you need, and let it go at that.

  Calm, peace, tranquility, these are the treasures that one can attain, they cannot be taken from one who has worked to acquire them. They cannot be purchased by any means other than contemplation of life's experiences. All we go through is to teach us something, nothing happens to you by chance. Learn from every lesson given to you. Life is a school, we are the pupils.

Understanding the world is knowledge,
Understanding yourself is enlightenment.
Mastering others is strength,
Mastering yourself is true power.
Having many things is affluence,
Being content with what you have is satisfaction.
Will power will increase perseverance,
But tranquility with the Tao brings eternal endurance.

  Acceptance brings a resolution that can be freeing. There are innumerable philosophies that deal with this, and it does not matter what part of the world they originate in, they all boil down to the same thing...what happens happens, you must accept the bad in your life as well as you accept the good.

Do you wish to change the world?
If you wish to change the world
to fit your desires,
you will not succeed.
The world is shaped by the Way;
and the self cannot shape it.
If you tamper with it, you'll ruin it.
If you treat it like an object, you'll lose it.
The world is as it is.

   There is no worse calamity than desire,
There is no greater misery than knowing no contentment,
There is no greater catastrophe than losing self-control.
Contentment can come from realizing one has enough,
Attaining contentment, one can attain internal peace.

The Way is sanctuary: the mysterious secret of the universe.
It is the treasure of peaceful people and it is the bad man's refuge.
Honors can be bought with flattery and fine words,
and admiration can be procured through good deeds.
But the Tao does not abandon even the sinner.
Therefore when the Emperor is crowned, and the three ministers appointed,
do not offer gifts of jade and fine horses, offer instead the lessons and learning of the Tao.
Why is it the ancient Masters esteemed the Tao?
It is because one who looked for it could find it.
And the guilty find forgiveness through it.
For these reasons it is truly the treasure of the world.

My words are very easy to understand.
My teachings are very simple to put into everyday practice.
Yet no one who is tied to the world can understand them.
And if you are chained to the world, you cannot apply them in your life.
My doctrine comes from the source of Nature, my actions have a purpose in accord with the Law.
If you cannot understand this; you cannot understand me.
Because I cannot be understood I am a greater treasure than you know.
This is why the sage wears simple unpretentious clothes,
but his treasures are kept close to him, in his heart.

I see a small country of small population.
A simple folk, who even if highly skilled work simply and easily.
Tools are seldom used. They do not bother to invent time-saving appliances.
They dearly love life, and take care to avoid death.
Since they love their homes and land, they do not care to travel.
Even with their horses, boats and carts, they do not wish to travel about.
Though they may have armor and weapons, these are kept out of sight.
These people have returned to simple techniques for record keeping.
Their food is tasty but simple; their clothing is unpretentious.
They are content with their simple homes,
and the simple pleasures and customs of a simple people.
And even though there might be a neighboring land within sight,
so close that the crowing of roosters and the barking of dogs can be heard from it;
these people have lived their entire life without ever having gone to that country.

Truth is not spoken with rhetoric;
rhetoric does not embrace truth.
The good do not quarrel; those who quarrel are not good.
Those who know are not widely learned, those who are widely learned do not know.
The sage does not hoard for himself.
The more he does to help others, the more he can do.
The more he gives to others the more his own treasures increase.
The way of Heaven is to cause benefit, not harm.
Therefore the sage observes this and imitates it.
He acts, serves, and does without relentless striving.

February 10, 2007

Happiness is...

Although mountains belong to the nation,
mountains really belong to people who love them.
When mountains love their master,
such a virtuous sage or wise person enters the mountains.
Since mountains belong to the sages and wise people who live there,
trees and rocks become abundant,
and birds and animals are inspired.
This is so because sages and wise people extend their virtue.
You should know...
it is a fact...
that mountains are fond of wise people and sages.

Zen Master Dogen,
'Moon in a Dewdrop'

The above video is from the Tibetan Singer Yungchen Lhamo.

It is a very beautiful, haunting, ethereal rendering of humanity.

February 09, 2007

   Our neighbor's dog, 'Scooter' likes to bite at vehicle tires. Twice in the last week she's heard me fire our tractor up and she's come down to bite at my tires. I worry a bit that she'll hook a tooth in the rubber and get flipped around and maybe run over. I yell at her and she'll run away, and then come up from the other side. I took this one photo of her, it is hard to take a photo of her doing this as when she sees me looking at her, she'll back off.  And the tractor is not a good place to be snapping pics from while I'm driving it.

   She does this also when I drive a truck by their place, but I never realized she got that close because in a truck you can't see her once she goes beyond the hood and fenders.  When she disappears under the hood I just close my eyes, cross my fingers and hope for the best and keep on driving (I can drive by sense of smell).

   She's a good dog, and causes no harm, and the neighbors are the best people one could know. But she is in danger right now with this aberrant behavior.  I watched a recent episode of 'The Dog Whisperer' wherein the clients had a dog that had been three times run over due to these same actions. The solution proposed by Cesar Milan was to put an Electro-shock collar on the dog.  When she ran to the moving tires they gave her a little shock and she backed off quickly.

  We've used Electro fencing here with livestock and for deer protection. All it takes is a couple good shocks and animals learn how to keep from coming into contact with it again. Even when the fence is disassembled and moved to another spot, the animals are afraid to come past the imaginary line where the fence used to be.

   Then when uploading the shaky photo taken from atop the moving, rumbling tractor I thought that perhaps I could practice my Photo-shopping techniques and use them as my resume to send off to Reuters to try to get a job as a 'stringer'.  So, I made the photos below from the photo above.

Above is the 'Enamelize' filter.

Below is the 'Mirror' effect.

  OK Reuters, I've got my bags ready to go, I have camera and software, I can twist the news any way you want it twisted.

Feb 08

The Eyes of Truth Are Always Watching You

   What a relationship humans and animals can have. From olden times animals have helped mankind in so many ways, and the imprinting that is done in their minds and ours as a result of our close relationship is extraordinary. It is amazing how humans can have an effect on animals so that natural enemies are brought to a point where they become friends, such as cats and dogs. This usually only happens with human intervention. We are a marvelous species, able to bring out so much good, and so often falling into depths unfathomable. The video below by Enigma features Elephants and Humans interacting in so many ways. Although the elephants are Indian elephants and long ago accustomed to human direction, the video reminds me in some ways of Hannibal and his march to Italy.

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'Beyond the Invisible'

   This is a most well done video. It contains a 'dream sequence' that is entrancing. Why is it our dreams can be so beautiful, rich and full of color, so that when we awaken the world cannot match what is in the recesses of our minds. Our minds are so full of imagery, and this video brings it out so well in something of a Cirque Du Soleil way.

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Return to Innocence

'Love, Devotion, Feeling, Emotion

Don't be afraid to be weak,

Don't be proud to be strong,

Look into your heart my friend,

That will be the return to Innocence

It's not the beginning of the end,

It's a return to yourself,

a return to innocence' 

  And this next video reminds me of my time living in Spain. The workmen with their lunch being bread and cheese and sardines,  the people working in the fields with their primitive (to our ways) methods. Sometimes in the rush of this modern life, I think back on the things I saw in other countries, it tends to slow me down some, to make me think about the simplicity of life, and the value given to 'things'.   'Simple', such an easy concept to look at on the surface, but much more complex when you look inside.

Thank you Enigma, for the beauty and creativity you put into your music, and your videos.

February 06, 2007

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